FreeBSD bug grants local root access

A security researcher has uncovered a security bug in the FreeBSD operating system that allows users with limited privileges to take full control of underlying systems. The bug in FreeBSD's kqueue notification interface makes it trivial for those with local access to a vulnerable system to gain full root privileges, Przemyslaw …

[Pawel 1]

There's another bug

in FreeBSD 7.2, according to frasunek.com - he can crash the system and is working on exploit.

[Anonymous Coward]

More bugs?

Where can I find more FreeBSD related exploits? I've tried some well-known sites such as milworm and remote-exploit but there are not very many there.

[Russell Jackson 1]

@More bugs?

That's the thing; there really haven't been very many to report historically. Most of the ones that have been discovered have been in third party software that's part of the base system (BIND, OpenSSL, etc).

[Yaro]

Hlarious

I remember when the BSD folks, along with the Windows folks, leaped on LINUX for the setuid root exploit which was the fault of the compiler and not the actual code in the kernel source.

Hilarious now that a glaring exploit appears for the allegedly most secure operating system ever created (Something I never really saw the BSD fanboys ever actually prove, btw.).

[foo_bar_baz]

@Yaro

You confuse FreeBSD with OpenBSD. The latter do the rigorous auditing you hear about.

[Tom 38]

Back in your hole Yaro

The only reason this is news is because of how rare bugs like this are in *BSD.

FYI, its OpenBSD who go on about how great their security is, not FreeBSD.

[Michael Fremlins]

@Yaro

Typical response from a Linux loon.

And only a couple of days ago we saw how Linux loons didn't even know that running a web server without needing root privileges was possible.

[Daniel 1]

"most secure operating system"

To be fair, this extravagant claim is only made by OpenBSD - not FreeBSD - and it is FreeBSD that is being described, here. However, kqueue (an event notifier, similar to the Linux epoll process, that was introduced in FreeBSD 4.1) has been causing a variety of kernel panics and escalation problems for more than half a decade. An OS X patch, back in January, actually disabled kqueue (for those that had installed the optional xtools set, on OS X) for this very reason, I believe.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Yaro, Re: Hlarious (sic)

> Hilarious now that a glaring exploit appears for the allegedly most secure operating system

> ever created (Something I never really saw the BSD fanboys ever actually prove, btw.).

Care to provide a reference? I've been using 386BSD and FreeBSD since the beginning and don't recall ever having seen or heard such a claim.

Maybe you're thinking of OpenBSD?

OTOH, it's always amazes me that there are Linux fanbois who can apparently keep track of the 100+ linux distros but can't keep the four BSDs straight in their head. Or remember that OS X has a Mach kernel.

[foo_bar_baz]

@Michael Fremlin

Lay off it, you're just putting yourself down to the same "loon" level. Same goes for all others who think the OS their computer runs defines who or how big a boy they are: get a life, start respecting yourself and others. I understand tongue in cheek comments, but certain people really need a reality check.

Regarding Linux noobs (not loons), I think it's a good thing we're seeing evidence of clueless Linux users. It means Linux becoming more popular among the non-übergeek crowd. Not many years ago there wasn't a Linux user who couldn't configure X with only a text editor, simply because they had to. It's not like those vi-heads have stopped using Linux and moved to BSD. It's that Linux is becoming more mainstream, and that's a good thing.

To all Linux noobs: keep those silly mistakes coming, don't give up trying and learning.

Rgds,

A Linux, BSD & Windows loon

[Anonymous Coward]

x86 architecture only ?

"The bug is the result of a race condition in the FreeBSD kqueue that leads to a NULL pointer dereference in kernel mode. Attackers can cause vulnerable systems to run malware by putting the code in a memory page mapped to address 0x0"

Do these NULL pointer exploits only run on the Intel x86 architecture and if so couldn't they make a Memory Management Unit immune to such exploits?

[Michael Fremlins]

@foo_bar_baz

I was a little harsh to some of the Linux noobs the other day, but I do draw a distinction between noobs and loons.

I consider somebody a loon as you have done - somebody who thinks their OS defines them or how big their balls are. My comment today was mostly aimed at Yaro, somebody who couldn't even get the right OS with his "most secure operating system" spike. Not surprising with the 874,000+ Linux distros out there (alright, alright).

I'm glad that more people are using Linux (or *BSD or Solaris...), that is good. And I thoroughly endorse trying and learning.

MF.

FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux loon.

Windows at home on the desktop, because it is the simplest for so many things.

[Ross 7]

OS job to hand-hold

First of all I'm not dissing *BSD here (or any other OS for that matter).

However, that said I find it amazing that in a highly networked world the OS doesn't shield itself from poorly written binaries. With C++ being so prevalent you get pointer arithmetic being used left, right and centre. By combining ASLR with prevention of mmap'ing below the first MB or so an OS can make arbitrary code execution a statistical improbability.

Instead though we live in a world where an attacker has a decent idea of where their exploit code is going to end up and a relatively simple way of getting it executed.

I know that developers don't want to spend time fixing other peoples problems but kernel development is rather different to anything else - it's your job to hand-hold the processes running on it. If you don't then some 9-5 drone programmer working out of Bhopal is going to make your OS look crap when it gets pwned via an exploit in his code.